SUV struck by train in Hyattsville, victim taken to hospital

A 29-year-old woman suffered serious but non-life threatening injures Tuesday morning when the SUV she was driving was struck by a train in Hyattsville.

Prince George's County Fire spokesman Mark Brady tweeted that the crash happened at about 10 a.m. where a set of CSX train tracks cross Decatur Road. The GMC Yukon the woman was driving was pushed 20-30 feet up the tracks after the collision, Brady said.

The victim, who had just dropped her three kids off at school, was transferred to an area trauma center for treatment. When a tow truck finally hauled away the large SUV, you could clearly see where the train slammed into its side.

An eyewitness to the crash said that the victim had nowhere to go and seemed unaware that a train was coming.

"The train was blowing its horn and everything," witness Keisha Blackman said. "The truck went up in the air and started dragging her back...and it flipped over on its right side."

CSX spokesperson Bob Williams says the 22-car train that was involved in the crash is en route to North Bergen, N.J. from Jacksonville, Fla.

When a train passed by later in the day, the warning signals that alert drivers and pedestrians appeared to be working correctly.

"They lay on the horn plenty and you hear them coming from a ways off," Andrew Condor, who works near where the crash happened, said.

However, Blackman says that the warning lights can be hard to see and thinks they could use improvement.

"They probably need to put an arm over here so nobody can get by before the train approaches," she said.